Quotes by Bhutanese Authors

If you want to have peace of mind, you need to listen to your heart or your inner nature. If you want to have peace of mind, you need to listen to your heart or your inner nature.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
The grasping mind holds on to everything – beliefs, people, possessions – so that it seems as though there is hardly any room to breathe.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Ironically, we often spend a great deal of time and effort trying to control our external conditions, while letting our internal reactions run wild.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Habits of the mind also provide our mental framework – the way we see the world
Gyalwa Dokhampa
We all have this restful mind, but sometimes our fears and our ego mind get the better of us and we can’t see it.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
It is such a mistake to assume that practicing dharma will help us calm down and lead an untroubled life; nothing could be further from the truth. Dharma is not a therapy. Quite the opposite, in fact; dharma is tailored specifically to turn your life upside down—it’s what you sign up for. So when your life goes pear-shaped, why do you complain? If you practice and your life fails to capsize, it is a sign that what you are doing is not working. This is what distinguishes the dharma from New Age methods involving auras, relationships, communication, well-being, the Inner Child, being one with the universe, and tree hugging. From the point of view of dharma, such interests are the toys of samsaric beings—toys that quickly bore us senseless.
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
The aim of far too many teachings these days is to make people "feel good," and even some Buddhist masters are beginning to sound like New Age apostles. Their talks are entirely devoted to validating the manifestation of ego and endorsing the "rightness" of our feelings, neither of which have anything to do with the teachings we find in the pith instructions. So, if you are only concerned about feeling good, you are far better off having a full body massage or listening to some uplifting or life-affirming music than receiving dharma teachings, which were definitely not designed to cheer you up. On the contrary, the dharma was devised specifically to expose your failings and make you feel awful.
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
The sutras liken reincarnation to the relationship between teachers and students. A singing teacher teaches students how to sing. His students learn techniques and benefit from direct experiential advice from their teacher. But the teacher doesn't remove a song from his throat and insert it into a student's mouth. Similarly, reincarnation is a continuity of everything we have learnt, like lighting one candle from another, or a face and its reflection in a mirror.
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
The Appreciation Meditation is the first step towards allowing and encouraging your inner nature to come to the surface of your mind.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
The tendency of the human mind is to see the world with a ‘dualistic’ view that describes everything through comparisons: good and bad, pain and happiness, beauty and ugliness, rich and poor.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Having a roof over your head with enough food to eat is a fundamental need of all humans if they are to achieve happiness.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Before any change for the better can take place, a level of understanding is always needed; because without understanding we tend to fall back on the automatic responses and reactions that we have built up over our lives.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Think about the suffering we cause ourselves internally through getting angry or jealous.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
It is through the filter of our ego that we give meaning to everything we see, touch, hear, taste and feel.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Someone who is said to have a big ego is thought to be full of themselves, to lack the ability to listen, to always rush to be at the top of the tree and to think their own ideas are the best.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
We are nourished by our relationships and generosity in return to our kindness and compassion for others.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Our experi¬ences and our memories are within us, and the key is to be aware of the lens or the filter, to realise that we can also change the angle, especially when we are feeling agitated or stuck in life, that we can change the record.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Our experiences and our memories are within us, and the key is to be aware of the lens or the filter, to realise that we can also change the angle, especially when we are feeling agitated or stuck in life, that we can change the record.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Through meditation, difficult thoughts and emotions may well rise up. And through practice, you can meet such emotions with kindness, listen to them, explore them and then really let them go.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
There will be times, for example, when you feel you are faking it. However hard you try genuinely to practice, it just doesn't feel right. And on the rare occasions it does feel authentic, the sensation is over almost before it began. So, try to be content with your practice, whatever it feels like, even when you are doing little more than paying it lip service, because at least you are making an effort.
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
Love Life, Life is Beautiful.
Reechen Dorji
It is important to be considerate of the future, but when we invest all of our present in our future hopes, we are placing a lot of value on what is inevitably in doubt.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
We can become fearless as we let go off our grasp on the fear of failure, because failure too is a perception rather than a reality.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Happiness is a beautiful feeling. It is a beautiful mind, and a peaceful mind
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Desire also creates a sense of attachment in the mind. Not only are we attached to our way of thinking and of seeing the world, but we become over-attached to the people or things we desire.
Gyalwa Dokhampa
Because of the Dharma, my mind was more free in prison than worldly people experience in the best of circumstances.
Yangthang Rinpoche